Karen Maneater

Karen Maneater Overview

It looks like extreme slot designer NoLimit City is back with another disturbing and entertaining game. In classic NoLimit City fashion, this game takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where society has collapsed and is now dominated by mask-wearing psychopaths. The Karen character you might already know from the designer’s other slot, Xways Hoarder xSplit. Mechanically this is a 6-reel game with varying row heights with 486+ pay lines available. The RTP for Karen Maneater is 96%, and the top payout is 11,757x the stake.

The features for this game are pretty standard fare for any NoLimit City game, starting with the xWays symbol that will only land in the middle four reels. When it shows up, it will randomly transform into a new symbol that will reveal a symbol of 2x to 4x in size, helping to grow the pay lines. On the other hand, the infectious xWays symbol will affect all symbols of the same type and grow them in any size from 2x to 7x to help expand the playing board. This game also has bonus meal features which include free spins, and the NoLimit bonus feature, which is the bonus buy option available. All features will be explained in more detail later in the review.

Theme and Symbols

On the one hand, this theme is a classic NoLimit City theme with all the normal dystopian world aesthetics we have come to know their designs by. On the other hand, the theme is a satirical jest at the idea of the Karen character who became popular in 2020. As you probably remember, Karen was an entitled white woman who always asked to see the manager because she was upset or disappointed in the service provided at the shop. This slot is NoLimit City’s vision for if Karen took over the world, and as you can see, they don’t think much of Karen.

The background for this game is the destroyed world that Karen has brought about with her terrifying rule. The KFC style bucket with KME on the left-hand side of the board also infers that Karen started taking over the fast-food industry, destroying society via the commercial route. The rest of the background is a dusty and destroyed amalgamation of America’s landmarks. These include the Seattle Space Needle, the San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge and New York’s Empire State Building.
The playing board for this game is a ramshackle wooden construction made of broken debris, with a disturbing selection of meat dangling from it.

The symbols for this game are split into low-value, high value and special symbols. The low-value symbols are the toilet paper, the beer mug, the syringe, the battery and the AK-47 rifle. The rifle is the most valuable of these paying out at 1x the stake for the top combination. On the other hand, the higher value symbols are the man on the loo, the moonshine redneck, the steroid junky, the shaman and Karen herself. Karen is the most valuable symbol, worth 3x the stake for the top combination. The specials for this game are the gas canister wild, the xWays symbol, the infections xWays symbol, the raccoon scatter and the sticky xWays icon.

Game Play

Karen Maneater is played on a 6-reel board with 486+ pay lines that can be expanded thanks to some of the features available here. To win combinations, players must land three or more matching symbols on pay lines moving from left to right, starting from the leftmost reel.
The betting range for Karen Maneater is 10p to £70 per spin. To adjust their bet levels, players can toggle their stake up and down using the tool located at the bottom left-hand side of the screen.
Further information, including a short tutorial and a display of the paytable, can be found via the menu button in the right-hand corner of the screen. The spin and auto spin buttons are located in the centre of the screen.
Volatility for this slot is rated in the high range. The return to player percentage of Karen Maneater is 96%, which is about average. The biggest payout that players can win on one spin is 1,1757x your stake.

Features

The first feature here is the xWays symbol feature. This special symbol only lands on the middle four reels. When they land, they change into a randomly selected symbol and then reveal another symbol of 2x to 4x in size. This increases the number of bet ways available.

The next feature is the xWays symbol that lands on reel 1. It reveals a symbol of 2-7 in size. It then changes all other symbols of that type and changes them into enlarged versions, too, once again helping to increase the bet ways.
The next feature is called the infectious wild feature. This bonus is triggered when any gas canister symbol lands on reel six. When this happens, the wild nudges to the bottom position of the reel. As it nudges, it increases the size of an attached multiplier by one per nudge. The wild multiplier is then applied to every symbol on reel six.

Next on the features list are the bonus meal features. These are awarded to you when you land three or four raccoon scatters on the middle reels. Landing three will result in 7 Free Spins with 3 Sticky xWays symbols. Four scatters, on the other hand, will result in 10 Free Spins with 4 Sticky xWays symbols.

When you are taken through to play your free spins, the scatters transform into Sticky xWays icons for the duration of the feature. These icons grow by one for every winning free spin that you find up to a maximum of 42 high. Extra scatters can help you re-trigger the bonus with more free spins and additional sticky xWays icons.
Finally, this game also carries NoLimit City’s NoLimit bonus feature, which is basically a bonus buy option that allows you to purchase access to features. However, this is not available in the UK.

Conclusion

In normal NoLimit style, this game is intense, slightly scary and very novel. The Karen satire and weird dystopian fantasy world will be very entertaining for some, but others might not really get into it. Playing experience-wise, plenty is going on, and loads of feature content keep things moving in different directions. Although RTP is good and the top win is high, too, the volatility is extremely high, which means this game fits into the category of high-risk, high reward. As long as you are aware of that, this should be a fairly lucrative game if you have patience.